Mannesmann AG

Mannesmann AG was a German industrial conglomerate headquartered in Dusseldorf that began in 1890 as a steel pipe manufacturer founded by brothers Reinhard and Max Mannesmann. Over the twentieth century the company grew into steel products, mechanical engineering, automotive components and eventually mobile telecommunications, the last of these becoming its most valuable business by the late 1990s. In February 2000 the British company Vodafone completed a hostile takeover of Mannesmann for roughly 190 billion euros, at the time one of the largest corporate takeovers in history, and the Mannesmann name was dissolved as an independent company in 2001. Its former pipe and steel tube operations were later acquired by Salzgitter AG, which continues to use the Mannesmann brand in that specialized sector. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/